10 DAYS ON EARTH. To 19 May.

London/Manchester

10 DAYS ON EARTH
by Ronnie Burkett

Barbican (Pit) To 5 May
Mon-Sat 7.45pm
Audio-described 3 May
then Library Theatre Manchester
11-12;16-19 May 2007
8pm
Runs 1hr 55min No interval

TICKETS: 0845 120 7511
www.barbican.org.uk (reduced booking fee online)
0161 236 7110
www.librarytheatre.com (Manchester)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 April

The Burkett phenomenon returns.
Ronnie Burkett’s back. The man who gives wooden performances a good name in adult theatre returns to England with his new show, a tear-jerker with wildly humorous interludes, and puppetry skill as astonishing as the puppeteer’s energy. For nearly 2 non-stop hours Burkett manipulates his characters while providing an almost-constant stream of dialogue, including plenty of throat-sore inducing rasp and volume.

It’s an astonishing memory feat. Just to keep the pace up, often in rapid-fire dialogue between 2 characters with contrasting voices, is wonder enough. With 2 characters Burkett has his hands literally full, yet somehow on occasions he manages to keep 3 characters on the go.

10 Days’s material is tricky. Though the vulnerability of child-minded adult Darrel is dramatic and strongly theatrical, there’s constant risk of exploitation through sentimentality. The Marionettes provide helpful distancing, as does the underlying pace, while the story adds the kind of displacement often used to introduce concepts like loss or death to young audiences.

As he goes through his morning routine, trudging to his shoeshine-stand for a day’s work, Darrel imagines the doings of storybook character Honeydog. The set’s panelled screens keep sliding aside to show Honeydog and his newborn sidekick-chick Little Burp, looking for their ideal home at a big tree beside a pond.

Meeting a transvestite rat, treading into Tennessee Williams territory with a southern belle sheep, and receiving aid from a helpful pigeon (who provides a splendid coo de theatre), Honey and Burp lighten Darrel’s darker days.

Their purposeful search with its happy end, so easy in fiction, contrasts the flashes back-and-forth over his life and his continuing dependency on a mother who finds life an increasing strain before, inevitably, she leaves him, uncomprehending, alone.

Darrel’s friendship with a maniac street preacher and brief encounters with a “girlfriend” raise levels of both pathos and comedy. Above all are the vivid-featured puppets, given life by Burkett’s skilled operation, pointedly seen in the careful treading of stairs, a character’s hand being taken out of his pocket, or the entrancing rear-end view of Little Burp’s waddle. Burkett’s Theatre of Marionettes is world-beating class.

Designer/Marionettes/Costume: Ronnie Burkett
Lighting: Bill Williams
Sound/Music: Cathy Nosaty
Dramaturg: Iris Turcott

2007-04-20 09:35:59